Publication: BMJ Open

Price A, Farooq R, Yuan J-M, Menon VB, Cardinal RN, O’Brien JT

3 November 2017

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The researchers here aimed to use routine clinical data to investigate survival in dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB) compared with Alzheimer’s dementia (AD).

DLB is the second most common dementia subtype after AD, accounting for around 7% of dementia diagnoses in secondary care, though studies suggest that it is underdiagnosed by up to 50%.

Most previous studies of DLB have been based on select research cohorts, so little is known about the outcome of the disease in routine healthcare settings.

Working with Cambridgeshire & Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust, a mental health trust providing secondary mental health care in England, the researchers used samples from 251 DLB and 222 AD identified from an anonymised database, derived from electronic clinical case records across an 8-year period (2005-2012), with mortality data updated to May 2015.

Raw (uncorrected) median survival was 3.72 years for DLB and 6.95 years for AD. Controlling for age at diagnosis, comorbidity and antipsychotic prescribing the model predicted median survival for DLB was 3.3 years for males and 4.0 years for females, while median survival for AD was 6.7 years for males and 7.0 years for females.

The researchers concluded that survival from first presentation with cognitive impairment was markedly shorter in DLB compared with AD, independent of age, sex, physical comorbidity or antipsychotic prescribing.

This finding, in one of the largest clinical cohorts of DLB cases assembled to date, adds to existing evidence for poorer survival for DLB versus AD. There is an urgent need for further research to understand possible mechanisms accounting for this finding.

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